If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I can remember a few old Text Adventures that deliberately used this trick, to make the f**kers impossible to map out properly on grid paper. I can't remember which ones in particular, (At least a couple of the Infocom ones, if I recall correctly) but but the worst offenders either completely wrapped in on themselves, or used a nasty trick whereby you'd leave one room by a particular compass heading, and enter the next from a completely different direction.

<a href="http://www.antichamber-game.com/">Antichamber</a>, formerly "Hazard - The Journey of Life", is <i><b>exactly</i></b> the game you want. There was a (now-thoroughly outdated and probably unflattering) demo released a while back; I for one found it incredibly interesting.

If I remember correctly there was actually a Duke Nukem 3D map which exploited an engine "feature" such that the player could go something like 720 degrees on a circular map before arriving at the start point. I think it was a multiplayer map or something, can't quite recall. Was it called Lunatic Fringe or something? Those kinds of tricks were a bit easier to pull off in sector-based engines which exploited the fact that two sectors could occupy the same "space" so long as you couldn't see from one sector into the other in the same space. At least that was true for BUILD.

Thief has a few bits of this, especially in The Sword (Constantine's Manor). That has some splendid tricks, probably the most memorable being the door that opens into nothing and the foreshortened perspective illusion corridors ending in teeny doors. It's all the more effective because the mansion starts out pretty ordinary and gets more wrong the further you progress.

SMT: Lucifer's Call/Nocturne saves most of its nastiest games for the Diet Building, as noted above, but dots some trickery around elsewhere, too. I particularly like the prison where going through a portal results in you wandering around the same dungeon on the ceiling.

Was going to bring up Skara Brae, but Wizardry unsurprisingly got on that one first. Will have to settle for "you are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike", which I think is from 1976.

If I remember correctly there was actually a Duke Nukem 3D map which exploited an engine "feature" such that the player could go something like 720 degrees on a circular map before arriving at the start point. I think it was a multiplayer map or something, can't quite recall. Was it called Lunatic Fringe or something? Those kinds of tricks were a bit easier to pull off in sector-based engines which exploited the fact that two sectors could occupy the same "space" so long as you couldn't see from one sector into the other in the same space. At least that was true for BUILD.

Yeah, that was Lunatic Fringe. There was another one called Tier Drops that was four different rooms that all occupied the same space.

Those kinds of tricks were a bit easier to pull off in sector-based engines which exploited the fact that two sectors could occupy the same "space" so long as you couldn't see from one sector into the other in the same space. At least that was true for BUILD.

I know Marathon's engine supported this, and I think Doom and its ilk did as well.

There's a bit in Batman: Arkham Asylum where you're walking down a corridor that seems very long, and the environment is slowly changing around you. You start off walking down a normal asylum corridor, and by the end it's a dirty back-alley at night in the rain, and if you turn around there's simply darkness following you.
It was the first time I'd seen such effects in a game, and I was fairly impressed.

There's also a similar bit earlier on where you enter a room, get told to leave, and "exit" back into the same room. That freaked me out!

There's also a similar bit earlier on where you enter a room, get told to leave, and "exit" back into the same room. That freaked me out!

Oh gosh, yes, I'd forgotten that bit. Very strange.

I'm playing Halo: Combat Evolved at the moment, and Dragon Age 2 before that. Both of those use repeating rooms to great psychological effect. Going from one room in Halo into an identical room, and then another and another is a genius move to disorient and confuse the player. Likewise DA2, having each dungeon be the same means that the feeling of spookiness from the ghosts and demons present in the game is amplified:
"I'm sure we've been here before, Varric."
"No Hawke, it's dark magic that messes with your mind - your very perception of reality is breaking down!"
"Chilling."
"Indeed."

I'm playing Halo: Combat Evolved at the moment, and Dragon Age 2 before that. Both of those use repeating rooms to great psychological effect. Going from one room in Halo into an identical room, and then another and another is a genius move to disorient and confuse the player. Likewise DA2, having each dungeon be the same means that the feeling of spookiness from the ghosts and demons present in the game is amplified:
"I'm sure we've been here before, Varric."
"No Hawke, it's dark magic that messes with your mind - your very perception of reality is breaking down!"
"Chilling."
"Indeed."

Likewise DA2, having each dungeon be the same means that the feeling of spookiness from the ghosts and demons present in the game is amplified:
"I'm sure we've been here before, Varric."
"No Hawke, it's dark magic that messes with your mind - your very perception of reality is breaking down!"
"Chilling."
"Indeed."

I liked that part where you fight the same boss in the same location for the second time and Hawke is like "What the hell! I thought I killed this already!"